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Christopher Coke Captured, Manatt Phelps Speaks Out

Posted by Brian Baxter

UPDATE: June 24, 2:28 p.m. The New York Times reports that Christopher Coke is being flown to the U.S. today to face criminal charges in New York.

Jamaican authorities are calling for calm after fugitive
drug baron Christopher "Dudus" Coke was taken into custody late
Tuesday, shortly before he tried to turn himself in to officials at the U.S.
embassy in Kingston. Two former Am Law 100 lawyers are weighing in on the
matter, as is the firm embroiled in the months-long controversy over his extradition, Manatt, Phelps &
Phillips.

Jamaican security forces captured Coke (pictured above) while he was
riding in a vehicle with the Rev. Al Miller, an evangelical minister who had previously helped broker the surrender of Coke's brother and sister,
according to The New York Times. Coke had managed to evade capture since late
May, when running gun battles took place in Kingston between his supporters and
local law enforcement officials seeking to arrest him on U.S. drug charges.

For months, Jamaican prime minster Bruce Golding and his
ruling Jamaica Labour Party (JLP) had refused to extradite Coke--indicted by federal prosecutors in Manhattan in August 2009 on drug and gun trafficking charges--by claiming that
evidence cited by federal prosecutors in the U.S. for an August 2009 indictment
relied on wiretaps illegally obtained under Jamaican law.

But Golding's
political opponents seized on a lobbying contract the government signed with
Manatt last year shortly after Coke's indictment, and the subsequent squabbling over Coke's future exposed the
deep ties between criminal gangs and political leaders in both of the Caribbean island
nation's leading parties, the JLP and the People's National Party (PNP).

Manatt general counsel Monte Lemann II spoke with The
American Lawyer about the firm's role representing the government of Jamaica
for a story in the July/August issue of The American Lawyer. That story is now available
online here. When asked for a reaction to Coke's arrest on Tuesday, a Manatt spokesman reiterated the firm's
long-standing position that it never worked on the Coke matter.

"Coke has to be worried that he'll be killed,"
says David Rowe, a Jamaican national and law professor at the University of
Miami, who previously was a partner at Holland & Knight. "He knows
everything about the JLP, the prime minister, and the connections between
everyone. Who knows what he might say before his case goes to trial."

Coke's father, Lester "Jim Brown" Coke, was a
leader of the same Shower Posse criminal gang his son is accused of heading,
but died in a mysterious prison fire in 1992 while awaiting extradition to the
U.S.

Another Am Law 100 alum, former Jamaican minister of
foreign affairs Anthony Hylton with the opposition PNP,
tells The Am Law Daily that Coke should be sent to the U.S. to face the federal
charges brought against him in
last August's indictment.

"For those of us who know the history of [Coke's]
father, it's not surprising that Coke wants to go to the U.S. rather than
remain here in prison," says Hylton, a graduate of the Georgetown
University Law Center who worked for Curtis, Mallet-Prevost, Colt & Mosle and
Dickstein Shapiro before serving as
Jamaica's foreign minister from 2006 to 2007.

Hylton says that the PNP favors transferring Coke over to U.S. officials in order to ensure domestic stability,
a position he believes is supported by Jamaican law enforcement. Hylton slightly
demurs when asked whether the political crisis brought about over Coke's
contested extradition has highlighted links between advisers close to the JLP
and illicit activities by the Shower Posse and Coke.

"The extent and
particulars of that are better qualified definitely from the law enforcement
side," Hylton says.

Hylton admits that when he served as minister of foreign
of affairs during the PNP's reign, the Jamaican government did from time to
time retain the services of outside foreign firms. But Hylton says "there
are settled procedures for engaging foreign firms," and that "none of
those procedures were followed in [the Coke] case."

"All of this shows that good laws in America that
work well like [FARA] can have in impact in other countries where the
disclosure rules are not clear," Rowe says. "[FARA] made a difference
here as the Golding administration was nearly forced to resign over the
disclosure of a lobbying relationship. And they'll have to be sensitive to
similar disclosures in the future."